HKS Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Climate change driven by anthropengic carbon emissions is one of the most serious challenges facing human development. China is currently the world’s largest developing country, primary energy consumer, and carbon emitter. The nation releases one quarter of the global total of carbon dioxide (9.2 Gt CO2 in 2013), 1.5 times that from the US. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of the growth in global carbon emission between 2010 and 2012 occurred in China. Without mitigation, China’s emissions could rise by more than 50% in the next 15 years. Given the magnitude and growth rate of China’s carbon emissions, the country has become a critical partner in developing policy approaches to reduce global CO2 emissions.

China is a country with significant regional differences in terms of technology, energy mix, and economic development. 1 Understanding the characteristics and state of regional carbon emissions within China is critical for designing geographically appropriate mitigation policies, including the provincial cap and trade system that is projected to be lanuched in 2017. In this study, I summarize the key features and drivers of China’s regional carbon emissions and conclude with suggestions for a low carbon policy for China.

China and the United States together emit more than 40 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide (CO2) according to the latest available data.[1] Therefore any successful global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must include meaningful contributions from both countries. Each country has started down this path by committing to reduce CO2 emissions and both have announced plans, policies, and programs to meet those commitments. However, the character of the carbon problem in each country is different and so while the plans, programs, and policies they are pursuing have some similarities, the emphasis is different.

Policymakers in the Gulf region recognize the importance of strengthening science and technology (S&T) to boost competitiveness and economic development. A number of efforts have been made in recent years to bolster higher education, establish technology parks, and invest in regional research and development (R&D). Collaboration between local universities and the private sector is instrumental to advancing S&T and the national innovation agenda, and countries in the Gulf have the opportunity to benefit from enhancing university-industry linkages (UILs).

In order to target policies and identify strategies for increasing UILs, a better understanding about the state, nature, and output of existing linkages is necessary. To address this, our research team at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs conducted detailed surveys of faculty and administrative staff at seven leading universities in Kuwait and the UAE. The data of the surveys was analyzed in conjunction with a bibliometric analysis of publications from those seven universities. Additionally, the bibliometric data was collected for three S&T universities in Singapore and three S&T universities in Norway for comparative analysis were chosen as a comparison group to characterize UILs because of their population size, the richness of fossil fuel resources in Norway, and the relatively recent development of Singapore in building a strong innovation ecosystem compared to other OECD countries to characterize UILs.

Analysis of the surveys and bibliometrics elucidated new insights about the current state of and future opportunities for strengthening university-industry collaboration in science and engineering. This report presents key findings and concludes with several policy recommendations.

China has committed to stabilize its greenhouse gas emissions and increase the percent of non-fossil fuel energy to 20% by 2030. This goal will require significant programmatic and policy changes across all sectors of its economy. The challenge is how to make these changes without incurring measurable political and economic costs. Ideally governments will draw lessons from efforts in other countries, but the Chinese system is unique. Hence it has created its own learning experiences by investing in multiple pilot policies and programs at the provincial and city levels.

Many of China’s cities are very large and include multiple districts, counties, and neighborhoods; and each one can serve as the locus of a separate low carbon pilot. These pilots are designed by local officials that are informed by guidelines from the central government. Thus, China often will have many “policy experiments” all taking place simultaneously. Lessons from these pilots are then used in the development of national and provincial programs and guidelines that shape future local initiatives across the country. These pilots are the ultimate example of “learning by doing.”

In designing low-carbon development strategies, China has relied heavily on multiple pilots. In 2010 and 2012, its National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) approved pilots to reduce carbon emissions in six provinces and 36 cities. One of the cities was Chongqing, which is one of the largest cities in the world, measured by area (82,400 square kilometers) or by population (30.16 million people). To put Chongqing in perspective, the city’s population is about 77% of that of California’s. It is divided into 21 districts and 17 counties. In 2015, its GDP reached $240 billion, which is equivalent to Finland’s.

Chongqing is located in southwest China and is the economic center of the upper Yangtze basin. It is one of five national central cities and has the same jurisdictional status as a Province.

This policy brief synthesizes existing studies on the impacts of the low-carbon pilots implemented by the city of Chongqing and draws insights from these experiences for the development of national policies and programs.

The Harvard-Tsinghua Workshop on Low-Carbon Development and Public Policy is the fourth annual joint workshop between the Harvard Kennedy School’s Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Center for Science, Technology, and Education Policy at Tsinghua University. The workshop convened leading experts on climate and energy from the United States and China at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, on June 1-2, 2017.

The workshop was divided into five sessions. The first two sessions focused on the scope of the climate problem and the options for addressing it. The following three sessions explored specific options: renewable energy, nuclear power, and air pollution regulation.

Stabilizing the climate system requires substantial reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, mainly through changes in energy systems that are currently dominated by fossil fuels. In the Paris Agreement, countries pledged to take voluntary carbon mitigation actions over the next 10-15 years. The climate system responds to cumulative GHG emissions, and carbon dioxide (CO2) can remain in the atmosphere for several centuries. Therefore, stabilizing CO2 emissions is not sufficient. The goal must be one of deep decarbonization, reducing global CO2 emissions to zero by the end of this century.

As the first and second largest CO2 emitters in the world, both China and the United States face critical challenges in the design, development, and implementation of deep decarbonization. China has pledged to peak its carbon emissions by 2030, and to increase the share of non-fossil energy in total primary energy to 20%. The United States pledged to reduce its carbon emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025, a goal that is now being questioned as a result of President Trump’s recent decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. While these targets promise near- and mid-term steps to mitigate carbon emissions, much stronger efforts will be needed after 2030 to eventually achieve zero or negative emissions. Therefore, the path towards deep decarbonization will likely involve multiple stages, and the policy priorities will vary with each stage. For instance, the first stage, pre-2030, will focus on increasing wind and solar generation, and replacing coal with natural gas. The second stage, from 2030-2050, may focus on a continuing expansion of renewables, deployment of storage technologies, as well as electrification of the transport, heating, and industrial sectors. The third stage, post-2050, may focus on deploying CCS for natural gas use, biofuels and synthetic fuels, as well as advanced nuclear technologies.

Compared to the United States, the fundamental challenge faced by China is its heavy reliance on coal. Analyses on potential decarbonization pathways for China highlight two findings. First, reducing carbon emissions beyond stabilization will be difficult. Multiple factors have contributed to reductions in the use of coal, including economic slowdown and the urgency to curb conventional air pollution. Under various assumptions on GDP growth projections, urbanization rates, and reductions in carbon intensity, the CO2 emissions peak is anticipated before 2030. However, the share of emissions from the electricity sector as a percentage of China’s total emissions is expected to continue to grow beyond 2030. A few key variables that will affect such a change after 2030 include the speed of renewable and nuclear scale-up, the level of efficiency improvement of incumbent coal power fleet, and the development of natural gas plants to meet demand when renewable energy is interrupted. In summary, it is widely acknowledged that achieving an energy mix that is decarbonized (necessary for deep reduction in carbon emissions) is a much more difficult task than the near-term target of 20-25% (necessary for peaking carbon emissions

Second, deep decarbonization scenarios for China’s energy system often depend on significantly scaling up renewable and nuclear generation in the electricity sector, as well as electrification efforts in the end-use sectors. Although these scenarios are carefully designed based on a deep understanding of China’s current energy system and projected growth, they still contain uncertainties. How to manage the intermittency problems for renewables and address safety concerns for nuclear energy are important challenges in almost every decarbonization scenario.

In this report, we start with a summary of the three key topics: electricity sector reform, synergies between climate and air pollution control efforts, and nuclear power development. We then focus on four cross-cutting themes that are relevant for all three topics: (a) implications of current policies on long-term decarbonization, (b) challenges in energy and climate governance, (c) public participation and engagement, and (d) decarbonization and the pursuit of other societal goals. Finally, we draw some preliminary conclusions and discuss potential directions for future scenarios.

This report recommends policies and actions to improve the return on investment the U.S. government makes in sponsoring research and development (R&D) at the Department of Energy's (DOE) seventeen National Laboratories ("Labs"). While the Labs make a unique and significant contribution to all of the Department of Energy's missions, the authors develop the idea that for the Labs to fully support DOE's energy transformation goals, their R&D management practices need to be updated to better reflect current research into innovation systems and management. They also highlight the necessity of Lab interactions with industry in order to impact the nation's energy infrastructure investment, which is, for the most part, privately held.

The paper analyses the synergies and trade-offs between emission reduction policies and sustainable development objectives. Specifically, it provides an ex-ante assessment that the impacts of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), submitted under the Paris Agreement, will have on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of poverty eradication (SDG1) and reduced income inequality (SDG10). By combining an empirical analysis with a modelling exercise, the paper estimates the future trends of poverty prevalence and inequality across countries in a reference scenario and under a climate mitigation policy with alternative revenue recycling schemes. Our results suggest that a full implementation of the emission reduction contributions, stated in the NDCs, is projected to slow down the effort to reduce poverty by 2030 (+2% of the population below the poverty line compared to the baseline scenario), especially in countries that have proposed relatively more stringent mitigation targets and suffer higher policy costs. Conversely, countries with a stringent mitigation policy experience a reduction of inequality compared to baseline scenario levels. If financial support for mitigation action in developing countries is provided through an international climate fund, the prevalence of poverty will be slightly reduced at the aggregate level (185,000 fewer poor people with respect to the mitigation scenario), but the country-specific effect depends on the relative size of funds flowing to beneficiary countries and on their economic structure.

Electric vehicles (EVs) have advanced significantly this decade, owing in part to decreasing battery costs. Yet EVs remain more costly than gasoline fueled vehicles over their useful life. This paper analyzes the additional advances that will be needed, if electric vehicles are to significantly penetrate the passenger vehicle fleet.

On June 7, 2018, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Center for Science, Technology, and Education Policy at Tsinghua University held the fifth annual Tsinghua-Harvard Workshop on Low-Carbon Development and Public Policy. This event brought together leading experts on climate and energy from academic, business, and government communities in both the United States and China. Previous workshops dealt with technology innovation, climate, market mechanisms to reduce carbon emissions, and local low-carbon initiatives. This year’s workshop focused on electricity systems and renewable energy penetration.

The workshop was divided into three sessions: the first focused on challenges confronting the electricity system in both China and the United States; the second discussed alternative policies to promote and invest in renewable power options; and the last session focused on opportunities and challenges for electric vehicles.

This report is a summary of the major points covered during the workshop. It strives to capture the underlying arguments made by all the participants, including areas in which there was disagreement.

To combat the threat of economic and social disruptions due to climate change, the global community must commit to a long-term goal of deep decarbonization, defined as reducing global greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels to zero or even negative. Ambient CO2 concentrations have been increasing, reaching a monthly mean of 410ppm in 2017 (based on observations at Mauna Loa Observatory). In the past few years, most places in the world have also experienced higher annual average temperatures. In addition, changes in the climate system have already resulted in disruptions, including more severe heat waves, tropical cyclones, droughts, floods, forest fires, and crop damage. Even greater negative impacts are projected in the future. Since CO2 can remain in the atmosphere for centuries, it is not enough to simply slow down the growth of emissions. In the long run, deep decarbonization will be necessary.

A current challenge is to lay the foundations for deep decarbonization, even if energy technologies (including pricing) are not yet up to the task. Climate change is a long-term problem. Urgent action is necessary, but because of the scale of the problem and the time needed to develop new energy systems, the challenge will persist for many decades. Climate and energy policies, today, should be judged not only by how they relate to immediate goals of emissions reduction, but also by how they contribute to providing options for decarbonization pathways in the future.

China and the United States are in position to promote energy technology innovation and tackle climate change. As the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, both countries have the opportunity to assume leadership positions. The landmark Xi-Obama climate agreement announced in 2014 outlined a unique collaboration between these two countries. This bilateral agreement also changed the character of global climate governance, which contributed to the success of the Paris Agreement.

China has made substantial efforts to reduce coal consumption and to increase non-fossil energy, and is currently on track to meet its climate pledges. While coal consumption reached 2.81 billion tce in 2013, it fell to 2.71 billion tce in 2017. The annual growth rate of non-fossil energy supply was 11.2% in 2012-2017. During the 13th Five Year Plan period (2016- 2020), the annual average GDP growth rate is expected to be around 6.5%, while the growth rate for energy consumption and CO2 emissions are anticipated to be only 2% and 1%, respectively. By 2020, the CO2 intensity (the ratio of CO2 emissions to GDP) is expected to decrease by more than 50% compared to 2005 level. It is therefore very likely that China will peak its carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve the targets pledged in the Paris Agreement to increase the share of non-fossil energy to 20% of primary energy.

In the United States, while the Trump Administration decided to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, efforts have been made by states, cities, business leaders, and universities to continue the support for climate action. The Trump Administration announced its decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement in 2017, and has initiated a process to reverse many of the climate policies implemented by the Obama Administration, including the Clean Power Plan. These actions have damaged the moral authority of U.S. leadership in tackling climate change, and may result in delayed action and reduced funding for mitigation and adaptation efforts. However, about 70% of Americans believe that climate change is happening, and the percentage is even higher among young people. More than 2,800 leaders from cities, states, universities, and companies have signed the “We are Still In” declaration to stand by the Paris Agreement.

Given the present-day situation, two lines of cooperation between Chinese and U.S. scholars are especially valuable. The first is to work with each other to promote climate action from all entities, rather than be limited to government negotiations. The bottom-up action from states, cities, counties, universities, businesses, and investors provides opportunities for new forms of partnership between a wide range of actors to pursue ambitious climate goals. Second, organizations in both countries can partner with each other to flesh out and evaluate policies for innovation, mitigation, and adaptation, so that when the opportunities present themselves, actions can be taken.

The Chinese government has repeatedly embraced a goal of developing and deploying electric vehicles (EVs) as it attempts to transition its passenger fleet away from conventional gasoline and diesel-fueled cars. China’s commitment to EVs is driven by the negative health impacts from local air pollution and anxiety over the country’s growing reliance on imported oil and the energy security problems that accompany it. China’s goal is to have five million EVs on the road by the end of 2020, increasing to over 80 million by 2030.

This paper addresses two questions:

1. Is China likely to succeed in meeting its ambitious EV goals?

2. Will EV deployment reduce greenhouse gas emissions as compared to the continued use of conventional gasoline-fueled cars? This question is answered from both an operational and a lifecycle perspective.

The Tesla Semi is a battery powered electric long haul truck currently in the prototype phase. Since cost and technological barriers have prevented electric vehicles from making significant inroads into the market for long haul trucks, the announcement of the Tesla Semi marks one of the first major attempts to bring electrification to on-road long haul freight transport. China, as the world’s largest carbon emitter, is an important market for truck electrification. China has a bourgeoning passenger electric vehicle market but, like the rest of the world, is reliant on heavily polluting diesel trucks for on-road freight transport.

This paper addresses two main questions:

1. What are the potential impacts on carbon emissions of electric long haul trucks in China?
2. What are the barriers to the adoption of electric long haul trucks in China?

To accelerate the global transition to a low-carbon economy, all energy systems and sectors must be actively decarbonized. While hydrogen has been a staple in the energy and chemical industries for decades, renewable hydrogen is drawing increased attention today as a versatile and sustainable energy carrier with the potential to play an important piece in the carbon-free energy puzzle. Countries around the world are piloting new projects and policies, yet adopting hydrogen at scale will require innovating along the value chains; scaling technologies while significantly reducing costs; deploying enabling infrastructure; and defining appropriate national and international policies and market structures.

What are the general principles of how renewable hydrogen may reshape the structure of global energy markets? What are the likely geopolitical consequences such changes would cause? A deeper understanding of these nascent dynamics will allow policy makers and corporate investors to better navigate the challenges and maximize the opportunities that decarbonization will bring, without falling into the inefficient behaviors of the past.

Carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS) represents a class of technologies that directly capture carbon dioxide, either before or after combustion, and then either permanently store it in underground deposits or recycle it for further use.

As of now, CCUS has been deployed only in isolated pilot projects; most of which sell the resultant stream of carbon dioxide to oil producers as a tool to increase production in older wells. This market is both geographically and economically limited, particularly if oil prices remain low.

However, growing concern around climate change has ignited recent interest in CCUS technologies and a series of studies on its global market potential. A 2017 International Energy Agency report suggests that to meet the 2-degree-Celsius target, CCUS must account for at least 20% of the reduction in annual global emissions by 2060. In the United States, Congress has approved generous tax credits for CCUS investments, generating new interest from investors. The number of CCUS projects is increasing in many countries, from the U.S. and Canada to China and Norway.

This policy brief poses the following questions. First, what is the value of CCUS technologies from the public perspective, and how might that change over time? Second, how can governments most effectively pursue that value?

In September 2017, the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) required that the city’s regulated electricity distribution utilities pay compensation to customers experiencing power outages of three hours or longer. The measure was intended to incentivize the utilities to invest in the infrastructure and management practices needed to deliver higher levels of service quality. In 2019, India’s central government announced that it was considering rolling out a similar policy for utilities across the country. Can outage compensation policies help India’s power system achieve better reliability for all customers?

This policy brief describes the persistent challenge of poor electricity reliability in India and how it interacts with key regulatory policies, analyzes Delhi’s experience with outage compensation since 2017, and highlights areas for additional economic and policy research on this topic.

To accelerate the global transition to a low-carbon economy, all energy systems and sectors must be actively decarbonized. While hydrogen has been a staple in the energy and chemical industries for decades, renewable hydrogen is drawing increased attention today as a versatile and sustainable energy carrier with the potential to play an important role in the carbon-free energy puzzle.

Our recent article, “The Geopolitics of Renewable Hydrogen in Low-Carbon Energy Markets” explores the global implications of renewable hydrogen adoption at scale and shows that the role countries will likely assume in global renewable hydrogen markets depends on their renewable energy resource and freshwater endowments as well as their ability to deploy enabling infrastructure.

Using the same analytical framework, this paper focuses on China and the potential role of renewable hydrogen in accelerating its transition to a low-carbon economy. Our research goal is to provide policymakers and other stakeholders the means to make informed decisions on technology innovation, policy instruments, and long-term investments in enabling infrastructure.

Providing secure, reliable, affordable energy that is needed to fuel prosperity for all without causing devastating environmental consequences is perhaps the greatest challenge of the 21st century. Over the coming decades, global energy systems will need to transition from an era which relied on fossil fuels to one more dependent on clean energy. This transition will not simply consist of replacing one energy source with another. Rather, it will affect the systems, networks, and partnerships that embody the energy industry as we have known it for the last century. Many of these changes will be driven by technological innovation, which in turn will impact the nature and value of existing assets, supply chains, and regulatory and policy institutions. But innovation by itself is not the goal; the real objective is to deploy innovation at scale and bring the ensuing products and services to market in a secure, reliable, and affordable way.

Academia, business, governments, and civil society are all searching for innovative solutions to actively decarbonize all energy systems and sectors, and yet today’s pace of energy innovation is simply not fast enough to meet the challenge. Why is this not happening more rapidly? What needs to be done to speed up the innovation effort?

Success is possible, but it will require close coordination of policy, technology, capital, and society. Partnerships between the public and private sector will be central to this effort and must be complemented by the ability to educate all stakeholders on the challenges and opportunities inherent in the energy transition.

By focusing on real-world energy companies and eliciting the perspective of stakeholders, our goal is to uncover lessons learned from the private sector and recommend new paths to lead in the transition to a low-carbon economy. What steps is your company taking to adapt and change in response to the climate crisis? What is the role of the private sector in meeting or exceeding the Paris Agreement targets? Where are there opportunities for leadership? As part of the new Global Energy Technology Innovation (GETI) initiative at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center we asked these and other questions of industry leaders around the world.

In the spring of 2020, I convened the inaugural student study group “Energy Innovation and the Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy: Advising Fortune 500 Companies.” This report, part one of a broader series of interactions with leaders in energy and innovation and Harvard students, dives into these issues through the lens of a multinational utility. We present the insights of ENGIE’s Executive VP Shankar Krishnamoorthy, who is leading the company’s strategy and innovation efforts, and provide the study group participants’ advice on how ENGIE could continue its low-carbon transition into the future.

The Belfer National Cyber Power Index (NCPI) measures 30 countries’ cyber capabilities in the context of seven national objectives, using 32 intent indicators and 27 capability indicators with evidence collected from publicly available data.

In contrast to existing cyber related indices, we believe there is no single measure of cyber power. Cyber Power is made up of multiple components and should be considered in the context of a country’s national objectives. We take an all-of-country approach to measuring cyber power. By considering “all-of-country” we include all aspects under the control of a government where possible. Within the NCPI we measure government strategies, capabilities for defense and offense, resource allocation, the private sector, workforce, and innovation. Our assessment is both a measurement of proven power and potential, where the final score assumes that the government of that country can wield these capabilities effectively.

The rise of developing economies (such as India and China) as new knowledge powers is reshaping the global innovation landscape. In a related vein, R&D has been increasingly globalizing beyond the triad region, multinational enterprises (MNEs) being the primary drivers of this shift, with India and China again emerging as prominent destinations for these transnational R&D activities. This article explores, through an analysis of scholarly and gray literature, along with semi-structured interviews of researchers and research managers in India, the landscape and dynamics of a broad range of linkages between MNE R&D centers in India and Indian higher education and research institutes, businesses, startups, and policy makers. We also focus on understanding how these linkages influence the technology innovation capabilities across the Indian innovation system. We then suggest key lessons and opportunities for Indian policy makers, university administrators, and MNEs, to expand and deepen the linkages and strengthen these capabilities.

Corporations, organizations, and even governments are purchasing offsets to reduce their carbon footprint. This policy brief provides an overview of the offset process – who buys them, who produces them, and who certifies them; describes the emerging challenges facing this market; and makes recommendations for the future.

These words describe the extraordinary changes happening in the Arctic region. The Arctic of today does not resemble the Arctic of fifty years ago, and the Arctic of 2070 will be different still, based on everything we know now. Warmer temperatures on land and in the ocean, retreating sea ice and glaciers, thawing permafrost, rapidly changing ecosystems, range expansion of novel species and stress in native species, changing ocean chemistry, and altered seasons all contribute to significant alteration of a region in an extremely compressed timescale. At the same time, globalization and the increasing international interest in the region add new pressures for access, development and geopolitical positioning in the Arctic. Concerns about the implications and impacts of that intensified engagement generate even more anxiety about the transformation to a brand-new Arctic in the 21st Century.

These changes are undeniable, and they are accelerating, as has been well documented by numerous studies, scientific papers, Indigenous Knowledge and by personal accounts from the people of the Arctic describing the changes they are witnessing and how their lives have been impacted. All these sources agree that the change and the impacts are unprecedented and threaten the health and safety of communities now and in the future. Has this documentation changed the way in which decisions are being made to prepare for the future? In my opinion, only to a very limited extent.